If more people actually did what the Bible told them to do their would be less killings, less crime, less divorces, less abuse, less addictions, less affairs, less hate and this world would be a much better place.
But by high school, events were already spinning out of control: an arsonist burned our school down about a month before graduation and we had a poignant, disheveled, song-less affair in front of the cindery remains.
Writing about Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Maintains, he claims: "Novels are like affairs, and small novels are affairs with less history, affairs that involved just a few glances across a dinner table or a single ride together, unspeaking, on a train, and therefore affairs still electric with potential, still heart-quickening, even after the passage of all these years".
Perhaps it is because novels are like affairs, and small novels – with fewer pages of plot to them – are affairs with less history, affairs that involved just a few glances across a dinner table or a single ride together, unspeaking, on a train, and therefore affairs still electric with potential, still heart-quickening, even after the passage of all these years.
War has become a far more chronic, less predictable affair.
In that sense it is perhaps a less weighty affair.
The Fermanagh conference will inevitably be a less dramatic affair.
A year on, with the world economy looking wobblier, the March summit was a less uplifting affair.
For most, though, it's a less professional affair and all the more charming for it.
Originally a BBC commission, Death & the Compass was a much less happy affair.
Perhaps then cellphone gift-giving will be a less harrowing affair.
